


One Step at a Time

by inujuju



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Beforus Ancestors, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 09:44:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3170261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inujuju/pseuds/inujuju
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Feferi takes over a bloody throne and clean it by hand. She starts with her gown and despite her achievements she knows she can always take things one step further.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Step at a Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mamestuck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mamestuck/gifts).



When Feferi takes over the Beforian empire, she begins small. Her voice sung about equality all throughout the war and now that her ancestor has finally been silenced the surrounding echo is too loud. She can’t just uproot ideas that have been instilled in her brethren for sweeps. Feferi is optimistic, but that does not mean she is stupid. You cannot rule millions of trolls without a thinkpan.

So instead she stats small, starts with her dress. Instead of the tight latex of the past, she dresses in smooth silk. It hands around her and is soft to the touch, coloured in teals and greens of the midbloods. She wishes to add a splash of yellow, a ring of burgundy, but she is starting small. Small steps, she chants over and over to herself. 

The garment makes Feferi look fragile, makes her look weak and docile. The lowbloods react to it better, seeing her long flowing dress pool beneath her. They reach out and brush it as she walks by, in awe at the nearly complete rainbow. They still cower before her, but the lack of visible legs, of visible muscle and power, makes them easier to approach. They’re not foolish; they do not think her weak, for if anyone remembers the fuchsia blood that stains Feferi’s hands, it is the lowbloods who got her there.

The midbloods are ecstatic, constantly showering her in praise and thanks for choosing their colours. Two particular midbloods follow her around like lost quackbeasts and Feferi lets them into her home, lets them carry the edges of her dress up. Their servants to the public but sooner rather than later they become her friends. They have big ambitions and even bigger attitudes and at times Feferi has to reprimand the one called Vriska for her treatment of the low bloods but everything takes time. At the very least Terezi is there to read the documents, study the laws, and highlight the ones that will shift the empire in the direction Feferi wants. Vriska silences anyone who questions.

The biggest complaint towards her new clothes comes from the highbloods. Always so loud and noisy, they speak as if she is weak and soft and a pupa. While it is not what she wishes, Feferi raises her trident at them, still bloodied from the war. She won’t let people say what they want of her in such a manner. They do not have to like her, to enforce that would make her worse than her predecessor, but they will learn to respect her, to watch their tongues in public. 

Her first step back is when assassins are sent after her, for how can she pardon a bronze over a purple when both their intent is the same. Trolls begin to question her as her garments are painted in blood and rumors spread that she has joined a most horrid religion long since extinct. Feferi denies the claim, Terezi defends her and Vriska is so ludicrous in her threats that she almost helps. 

Feferi kills the assassins, no matter their blood colour, yet she takes a step, a small step, forward, and barriers them in the order they come; burgundy beside purple, teal beside olive. The order is destroy in her gardens, white flowers dyed whatever colour they desire. Feferi makes her gardens a public place, one where people may come to mourn to the flowers of all colours.

Her third step is a leap, a lunge, one that she has yet to land from, one that she probably never will till her death. After the five sweeps of soft clothes and beautiful gardens, Feferi is presented with a mutant. A child born with a bright red blood like fire, a child born both above her and below. If she accepts this troll, allows him to live, she must address the spectrum as a whole. She cannot afford little steps, baby nudges. Yet if she kills him the people will never forget. The trolls will learn of equality amongst themselves but discrimination would not end, not in her reign.

As Feferi looks down at the small troll tied in rope and shivering she wonders if discrimination will ever end. Her heart tells her to free him, but her mind tells her to kill him. She cannot risk everything by taking on so much and perhaps her heir will fix have a better idea on what to do with mutants. It’s not like she can just lock him away after all.

Wait, Feferi thinks, who says she couldn’t do just that? Neither kill him nor free him, place him in a place she can protect him yet control him. Not a perfect fix but the world isn’t ready for a perfect fix yet. Baby steps, she tells herself.

The mutant’s name is Karkat and she allows him the honour of keeping the name. He lives in a tower and Vriska calls him a princess in poor humor. They two fight often but Terezi breaks them up and Feferi is so very thankful that she’s there. The palace is livelier with the mutant blood, between Karkat’s angry shouts and misplaced concern and confused existence. 

The public doesn’t know how to react to his presence and so they don’t. Many people forget about the mutant in the tower and slowly he becomes more like a ghost than a troll. Feferi doesn’t move to change that, not just yet, but she visits him once a week. He becomes something close to her, a quadrant perhaps, but neither of them speaks of it, and the public never learns about how the echoing sounds in the tower are two trolls ranting about the world and all its problems to one another as they braid each other’s hair.

Despite ten sweeps passing since her reign, Feferi doesn’t gain many friends. She was fit to bedazzle the courts but few trolls attended do to her strict rule on it being open house. Highbloods scoffed at low and the lowbloods feared being killed if they came. More often than not she attended the balls with her own friends, “servants”. Feferi wasn’t popular but in her kingdom popularity wasn’t nearly as important as other creatures. Despite her hatred for the spectrum it was what kept her on top, and until another fuchsia was born it would keep her there. The angry assassinations ceased when the jade bloods reviled that there was no contribution from the last empress and that to kill Feferi would mean the end of their empire. Though some trolls craved the loss of her blood, thousands more could not imagine life without it. She became protected as a result, by the very thing she wished to destroy.

Tiny steps, she reminded herself. Steps that would keep her alive long enough for peace to fall into place. Despite her desires though, trolls flocked to her with questions of what she would do to fix the lack of heir. She was old enough to copulate yet she had never spoken about her quadrants. Feferi revealed that she didn’t have any quadrants of that type. A mistake, a step back, Feferi should have known the result.

The romantic gossip explodes and before she knows it there are suitors of every colour at her door. A troll of violet is especially pushy and she finds herself waxing far darker for him than any other troll, even Vriska. The way he saunters around and undermines her effort, the way he pretends to be a highblood despite taking a liking to lowbloods. Everything about him makes her loath him because he is what she would have been if she had decided to follow in her ancestors footsteps instead of taking her own path. A highblood that only looks down for entertainment.

She ends up having black romps with him, despite attempt of one of her advisors, a jade that waxes grey for the world. It goes badly, the troll, Eridan, spreading the news of being the empress’s kismesis. Yet the claim only makes her hate him more because unlike her, he is not tied to having to act in correctly, does not have to hide his palest in a tower, his red heart in politics, or his mediation between command. The highbloods even approve and Feferi gains back their appreciation and the fact that it’s because she fell black for a highblood is what does it makes her boil. That they would not accept her till she tied knots with the higher kind.

Parts of her wishes she could hate Vriska more, to use her to get the same approval but not the guilt of having her so high. However Feferi could never hate that troll so much, she’s much too precious with her grand tales of pirates. If anything she pities Vriska for being born in a time that she cannot accept. Feferi wonders how much longer Vriska will remain by her side.

Sweeps pass and things change step by step by step. Feferi never reveals her love for Terezi, she dies before she can. Her death becomes a catalyst of cold war, one fought in court rooms and spilling heated words, a war Terezi would have loved to be in. She was killed by a lowblood and in most cases the troll would be killed. He sparks with power and he cannot be contained. He should be killed by all rights. However Feferi cannot bring herself to do so, because how will killing him solve anything. An accident, clear as day, one where even highbloods begin to murmur that it wasn’t the boys fault.

Feferi consult Kanaya, her wonderful jade, on what to do. And Kanaya looks up at the tower that holds Karkat. The empress sees the idea before Kanaya speaks it. Lock him away like she did Karkat, but in a world with more light. A place where he can be protected and learn to control himself, where he can live out his short days in place of Terezi.

Feferi holds a meeting with the other highbloods, all having accepted her adornment for the lowbloods because of their heavy presence in this new voting thing she implemented sweeps back. Something that never would have come to pass without Terezi. There an olive blood volunteers to look after the gold. She is qudranted with the infamous Equius and she is favoured among the spectrum. Feferi grants her access to anything she needs to care for the gold blood.

Word soon spreads of the luxury the murderer is granted. Worry spreads over the power lowbloods have as a result and Feferi is brought more and more cases of lowbloods going out of control. She is brought complaints of lowbloods health, of how they barely live long enough to see happiness. She speaks with Nepeta, the olive, about accepting more troubled cases. She agrees without hesitation.

On the anniversary of Terezi’s death, the same day Vriska went missing and Karkat’s nightmares, Feferi declares a change in hemospectrum. No longer will the highbloods control the low. Instead they will care for them, look after them, follow the example Nepeta and Equius are. She appoints a purple by the name of Gamzee in charge, one of the few highbloods from the war who sided with her. He takes it with a smile and a shrug, lowblooded children already clinging to his spotted pants.

Step by step things change more and more. Feferi is surprised that in fifty sweeps barely anyone remembers the time of murder that she lived through. Nepeta passed her house onto her descendant, a burgundy with a chipper outlook on even the darkest of subjects; one that is already lining up a violet to take her place when she passes. Feferi feels pity swell in her breast for the devoted troll, her strength reminiscent of her past love. She acts on it this time, not wanting to live with more ifs and buts. Kanaya doesn’t argue and Karkat is lost in sleep more often than not these days.

Her circle grows and before she knows it an heir is brought to her, one that is celebrated instead of hated. One that is wrapped in a rainbow cloth instead of killed. She holds a ball that no one fears attending and before she knows it Feferi is one step closer to the utopia she always dreamed of having.

**Author's Note:**

> I really loved the idea of looking at Feferi becoming empress and changing the empire. I really wish I could have done it more justice. I hope to one day revisit this idea and really flesh everything out!


End file.
